Remembrance
by SiriusPotty
Summary: Following Severus Snape and Lily Evans through important moments in their lives starting with the calm before the storm of the First Wizarding War up until the very end. Will also include snippets from other characters. Disclaimer: I am obviously not JK Rowling, this stems from all her genius.
1. Chapter 1 - An Icy Summer

It was the year of 1976. It was the longest and hottest summer since records began and did not make Spinners End, Cokeworth, any the more bearable for its sudden scorched landscape. The heat was sweltering, the ground was hard and cracked like parched lips and the once luscious fields that surrounded the lines of terraced houses now had degraded themselves to nothing more than desolate wastelands of dust and debris. The river that snaked around the outskirts of the town had dried up, leaving a long and unsightly length of earth to bear crude judgement upon: beer cans from late night stragglers was littered amongst the dead weeds and if you looked closely enough the small, fragile skeletons of fish glittered in the unforgiving sun at its bed.

However, there was a small reprieve from the weather in the way of a clump of trees that stood a little way back from the river in a secluded clearing where I, Severus Snape, took full advantage of. I was leaning against one of the familiar trees in the refreshingly cool air that the shade provided me with. A passer-by would perhaps think me to have a hunched disposition but it was only out of habit because I so often had my nose pressed closely to a book.

It was one of those few moments when I was genuinely relaxed and at my ease. The forest dwelling was in half light and actually looked like a half way decent place to spend a pleasant afternoon with a friend. There was only a slight taint to my peacefulness though. I wiped my streaming nose on the sleeve of my terribly overlarge mackintosh for the hundredth time that day. Hay fever had been plaguing me incessantly ever since my return home. My thin mouth twisted in a sardonic grimace. When did my return home ever offer up anything more than a feeling of more distain and disgust for where I lived?

As my long thin white fingers idly picked about the scrubs of the forest floor, I felt my forehead knit together as I fell into one of my deep thoughts. It was a little less than a month now before the start of my fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and in all honesty I couldn't say that I was wholly looking forward to it. Yet…nor could I say that I wasn't looking forward to it either. It would be of quite a considerable relief to leave, as it always was, to become free of my parents incessant arguments and the pitiful and shameful home life that I only had to endure for a few years longer before leaving forever. And yet a return brought about its own problems.

I felt my mood of relaxed ponder turn darker, more sinister, as thoughts strayed to the face of James Potter. What I wouldn't give to just have it be just him and I, to see how he _really_ faired against myself without the help of his bastard friends and his crooning audience. He would be no match for me, who would forget more curses than Potter would ever know in his pathetic life. I imagined Potter in my mind's eye, crawling on the ground with his wand far out of reach, bleeding, crying, and pleading for my mercy like the coward he was.

Then another figure entered my imagination. A figure who's dark red hair bounced as she rushed towards me, a figure who had also filled out over the last year or so as well … At first I thought Lily to be cross, but no, she had come to give her admirations of my skill, my power and my ability and to laugh at the downfall of Potter. I closed my eyes against the image and sunk back a little more against the trunk of the tree. Yes, I had associates at school of that of my house, Slytherin, but Lily was the only one who truly made it bearable for me at Hogwarts against the tirade of slander from a large proportion of the school lead by Potter, Black and their cronies. When I saw her stroll into the Great Hall for breakfast, or pass by me in the corridor or see her smile at me from across a classroom it made my gut clench in a private pleasure.

I was so lost in my musings that it disguised the footfalls of Lily Evans whom was walking towards the place where I was lounging. This exact place held so many joyous memories of past excursions where we had spent hours together, just the two of us and no one else. However of late I had only seen her a handful of times. She had been meeting up with friends from school or neighbours, basking in the sunlight and sipping lemonade.

'Hey,' Lily called, startling me out of my deep reverie and making me quickly straighten up almost dizzyingly so; I felt the warmth of a familiar dull flush tint my cheeks as I saw her watching me. 'Sorry, I didn't mean to make you jump.' She gave me an apologetic smile before putting a hand down to the ground to sit down opposite me at her tree. She lay back against it heavily and closed her eyes for a moment although it gave her great relief to just be still for a moment. She wore a tan brown cropped top with a halter neck fastening, a short tiered skirt of a floral pattern in dark blue and her favourite pair of leather sandals that were scuffed and worn from wearing them so often. My flush grew in its temptress like heat. My eyes, as if magnetically attracted, stared at her bare, creamy stomach in uncomfortable fasciation to the point where I had to pinch my side to look away, dare they stray anywhere else.

'It's fine, it wasn't your fault. I was just…' I muttered without finishing as I struggled to regain some sort of composure. That's when I finally noticed the slight stillness of her face and the set of her mouth. She still had not opened her eyes. Lily usually had a very animated face so was easy to catch out on if she was ever troubled or upset.

'What's wrong?'

She exhaled deep and slow, still blinded by her lids to my expression. 'It doesn't matter.'

'It does to me.' I mumbled in a muted voice of embarrassment and quiet curiosity. Lily paused before opening her eyes and straightened up a little to face me.

'That's nice of you but I don't really want to talk about it … it's just family stuff, you know, the usual.'

She gave me a strained smile before crouching cross legged forward to twirl a twig around her slender fingers as she so often did with her wand. I felt a smatterings of hurt dissipate the embarrassment away in my stomach. Lily usually told me everything, why now the sudden change? I ducked my head down and found my own twig to busy myself with, lest I show some sort of emotion that was running through my head on my face.

'So what have you been up to?' Lily began with effort, shaking back her head to fully focus on me. 'I feel like I haven't seen you in ages!'

'Well that would be because you haven't seen me.' I uttered, probably a little too sourly for Lily's liking. All of a sudden my good mood for seeing Lily had taken a turn for the worse.

She looked up from watching her hand with a troubled, awkward expression on her face, not quite meeting my eyes over her slightly elevated brows.

'Yes well…I have other friends Sev, I can't ignore them.'

'Right.'

Lily sighed, aggravated a little at my reply no doubt, but I couldn't help it. For years we had spent the majority of our time together but now…it had tapered off. I often thought that Lily was too popular for her own good. Or perhaps it was just that I felt lonely without her. I took a small, tight breath to try and dispel my growing anguish. My eyes, in the quietness of the lull, explored the forest floor to remain intact and without chagrin.

'Who have you been hanging around with?'

'Oh, just a few people from school. Mostly my roommates and David from down the street.' To my vexation I noticed the sudden pinkness in Lily's cheeks at the mention of his name when my gaze flickered upwards. I had seen David hanging around the street corners when I strolled around trying to kill time, not being able to stand being cooped up in my room anymore. He was older than me and Lily by a few years; was heavily into punk rock, eyeliner and smoked copious amounts away from his parents' eyes.

'How nice.' I attempted to try and keep the derisiveness and jealousy out of my voice to the best of my ability.

'Yes it was it's been great.' Lily finally seemed to forget about her mysterious feud with her family and became her usual self once more. 'I went to go see the Ramones at the Roundhouse in London, it was crazy.'

'Your parents let you go all the way to London on your own?'

Lily rebelliously smirked a little in a way that made me very sure of her answer.

'Well they didn't exactly know that I went. I just said that I was meeting friends from school in London. It wasn't a total lie because _I was_ in London, just you know…'

'Is that why you had an argument?' I couldn't help it.

'What?' Lily replied with a furrowed brow.

'You know with your family, did they find out about the concert?'

'Oh no, no…it's just ridiculous nonsense, David agrees with me.'

'What is?' I prodded but Lily merely shook her head looking faintly embarrassed.

'So you'll tell David but not me?' I couldn't keep the accusatory tone away from my voice and eyes as I stared her right in the face.

'Next you'll be saying that Potter agrees with you to!'

'Oh stop it.' Lily suddenly snapped irritably giving me a sharp look.

'Stop what?'

'I'm just so tired of you going on about him all the time…it would be so nice to talk about anything other than Potter. You know, not obsessing over him or giving a blow by blow account of all of his activities at school.'

'I don't give a _blow by blow account of all of his activities at school_!' I griped in scandalised tones. My face was very rapidly rising with hot blood again as well as my quaking voice in volume. 'I just can't believe how stupid people are about him as if he's some sort of saint! Prancing around the castle like he owns the place, breaking rules left right and centre without so much as an expulsion from Dumbledore-'

'Hey!' Lily cut across me with an icy steel inflection in her voice that matched her emerald eyes. 'Dumbledore is the greatest wizard there's ever been-'

'I know but-'

'Maybe he thinks there are _more_ important things he could be doing with his _time_ than monitoring after James Potter _every other_ _day_. You know, perhaps he's more worried about You Know Who rather than an idiot teenage boy!'

I chose to ignore her comment about You Know Who. It put my already nervous stomach in confused knots.

'He's supposed to monitor his students! It's his school, he's the Headmaster!'

'Well what about Mulciber and Avery?' Lily shot at me with scorn, her chin lifted in strong resolute, suddenly changing the conversation into an ambiguous direction.

'What about them?' I queried cautiously.

'They should have been expelled after what they did to Mary that one time a few years ago but they didn't.'

'And _I_ told you it was _nothing_.'

All of a sudden Lily startled me by jumping to her feet with balled fists at her sides; her short red hair swished about her face in an angry way, her cheekbones high with colour.

'I'm going home.'

'What! Why?' I asked with disappointment flooding my body with its entirety. 'You've only been here five minutes!'

'I have a headache. Wait no, in fact that's a lie, you've _given _me a headache.' My brain tried to engage with my mouth as quickly as possible but without another word Lily turned, dropped the twig from her fingers and was about to leave when she paused. My hopes spiked but dropped at her words.

'And if you _must_ know, my parents don't want me hanging around with David anymore because they think he's too old for me and that I'm too young for a relationship.' She moved quickly from the cluster of trees and within moments I was quite alone.

The clearing abruptly grew dark and cold.


	2. Chapter 2 - I've Chosen My Way Part 1

The portrait hole closed behind me in the wake of my words and I stood there for a moment not quite believing what had just taken place. Our relationship had grown tenser and more frigid as the years progressed from childhood to adolescence, yet I had never envisaged a complete sever in its foundation. I never foresaw it becoming obsolete. Nor, I guess, did I imagine that he would ever go back on his promise that day so many years previous to this one.

'_Does it make any difference, being Muggle-born?'_

'_No, it doesn't make any difference…'_

Whenever a major change in my life would present itself, I would always close my eyes for a moment, just a moment: not much longer than a blink. The world would elapse around me and I imagined that I was the only person living on earth and the universe was at my mercy; a lone wander in vastness. I closed my eyes in the gloom of the entrance of the Common room with my back to the portrait hole and I surrendered myself to the pain of my decision. As moral and as righteous as it was, it gave me no pleasure to lose such an integral part of my childhood and self-discovery.

_You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine …._

I opened my eyes. I had no choice but to carry on with the rest of my life.

'Hey Evans, wait! Are you alright?' James Potter who was gathered around the fire in the best armchairs with the rest of the Marauders, inclined away from the chess match he was playing with Remus to stare at me imploringly. His glasses were opaque in the reflection of the fire light, his eyes impossible to deceiver and most of his face was laced in shadow. However, most of his upper body leaned imperiously towards me as if I needed comfort in some sort of way that he would most willingly and expertly provide me with. There was no longer the deep gash on the side of his face that Snape had inflicted on him earlier; however the ugliness of his personality shone through like the ghost of the gruesome cut nonetheless.

I had always disliked James' actions but now I felt like everything about him was in question.

I expended the very minimal amount of my attention in his direction before heading up to bed with my head down and hands cold.

I lay on my back staring up at the richly embodied canopy up above at my four poster bed. I slept fitfully for what must have been only a few hours before awakening fully and have remained so for goodness knows how long. I could hear the other girls in my dormitory sleeping, breathing heavily, and making slight snuffling noises in their sleep. My brain just couldn't switch off from everything, all of it. What Snape had done and what I had done, what Snape didn't do and what I didn't do.

All of a sudden I couldn't stand the inertia so I planted my feet on the cool wooden floor.

I wandered down the still sleeping corridors of Hogwarts in the half light of the still somnolent surroundings of Scotland; it was several hours earlier than anyone would start to be pulled away from their dreams yet. I felt oddly distant from everything as if earth was not my centre for gravity as I walked. Perhaps it was my lack of sleep.

My silent footsteps led me down the Marble staircase, skipping the trick step and with a solemn tab of my wand, unlocked the Great oak doors out into the grounds. Tiny insects flew spritely in the warm despondency of pre-dawn and mist that was yet to be burned off by the risen sun; it lingered sensuously close to the trees and water of the black lake. I made my way back to the beech tree for ironies sake of the previous day's events and sunk against its rough bark, closing my stinging, tired eyes with a sigh. It was certainly nicer sitting here, free, than in the stuffy confinements of a bed that I could find no sleep in.

When looking inside myself, I took note of a fair mind and a girl who liked to enquire into things to make her own judgement, not to follow what others had already christened it with. In my naivety though, things had slipped through the gaps that I hadn't noticed before. My mind had been unwilling to swell itself to other possibilities if it meant that I was wrong. I think in some ways after all I _did_ see the world in black and white. Good and bad, right and wrong. However as I had grown together with the world around me I realised that this was not the case. There was grey in amongst and dispersed in the breaths of everybody. My quandary wasn't wholly bad, yet I feared that all his goodness was draining from him, drop by drop …

In my first year at Hogwarts, I became aware of the prejudice of the Slytherin house and of its rivalry with Gryffindor. I felt proud that I was abolishing that with my continued friendship with Severus. I hadn't grasped that it had made me self-righteous and foolhardy. I was proving that they weren't all horrible wasn't I? I was leading the way through the discrimination valiantly on my own with my puffed up ideals and beliefs. I cast my superior and pitying eye over anyone who didn't see things the way I did and shook my head at their ignorant morals.

Yet … I was the one who was blinded. I was the one who didn't appreciate what was before my very eyes. I ignored my friends bringing me news of Severus calling other Muggle-borns by that _repulsive_ slur in passing between classes. I dismissed his love for the Dark Arts and the hearsay that he was involved in certain demonstrations of it on peers. All of that however paled in comparison with one particular revelation. The image of his face as he failed to contradict me when I remarked on his desire to join the Death Eaters would stay with me forever. That knowledge felt like a physical pain in my chest. My childhood friend, join the evil ranks of You Know Who? A shiver scurried down my spine at the thought. A strong momentum that one couldn't fail to notice was gathering outside the safety of Hogwarts. The Daily Prophet brought us news of disappearances, killings, attacks … All taken credit by him and his followers.

I rested my chin on my knees as I gazed over the expansive Black lake; burning sparkles lit its smooth surface as the first rays of sunlight glossed it. I inevitably knew that there would come a day in the future when I would fight his friends, and he mine, possibly to the death and wonder where it all went wrong.


	3. Chapter 3 - I've Chosen My Way Part 2

The portrait hole closed with a finality that seemed to echo around my head. I blinked several times, my jaw flickering minutely from left to right, right to left.

I tried to breathe.

I tried to think.

But I couldn't quite manage either.

'I take it she's not happy with you, then?' The Fat Lady pondered amusedly down to me but I made no attempt to answer her questions.

I stumbled blindly along the seventh floor corridor with sweat catching at the strands of my hair at my temple and my hands tingling in an icy sort of way. My mind had become too sluggish to catch up on what had just happened unlike my body. It felt like I was fighting for my life, my heart was thundering, my whole body quaked and no thought could properly form in my mind. It was something about Lily, Lily being angry and something about the Dark Arts and – and the Dark Lord.

'…You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"

Her voice echoed strangely as it replayed in my head as my feet pounded the carpeted halls; I could feel the eyes of most of the portraits that I past stare at me curiously. Darkness had already settled in around the castle and I found it stifling with the heat, so much so that I gripped a hand to my stomach and without conscious thought made straight for the nearest bathroom.

I threw open the wooden door of a random cubicle, slammed it shut and collapsed in a shivery huddle on the tiles of the floor as I wretched all of the dinner that I had eaten who knows when ago into the toilet.

Once I had finished, I sank against the door and without warning tears began to scald my eyes and I buried my face into my robed knees.

'…I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine...'

This couldn't be the end. I had to still see her, be able to talk to her and laugh with her. I needed her when school had finished for the summer, I had no one else to make home bearable. I needed her in my life; she was my closest and oldest friend, the person who knew me better than anyone else I could think of … she was the girl I was in love with.

I gripped my hair painfully tight to try and drown the pain that was making it difficult to take breaths with, so much so that strands started to part company with my scalp.

I couldn't see any way out of this misery. I knew Lily, I knew she never went back on her word, but surely I could make her change her mind, make her see sense?

I sunk to the cold tiles on the floor in a sprawled heap not even caring about how late it was and that I needed to get back to the Slytherin Common room.

But even as I thought of waiting outside the Great Hall for Lily in the morning, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I understood the futility of everything beyond this day that I would have to endure.

As the weeks and months and years went by, my eyes we're almost attracted to her in a magnetic sort of way and saw everything being played out like a nightmare I would never wake up from.

I watched him pour her a cup of coffee at breakfast. I saw her lips move into words of thanks with a cautious smile.

I saw her laughing at a joke he had told her. The sound was guttural and loud. Her head was thrown backwards and her hands pressed to cup her hipbones as they walked together down a teeming corridor after lessons on a Friday afternoon. Their Heads badges gleamed in the October sunshine which caught sparkling strands of her hair and the white of his teeth.

I saw her barely inches away from him down on the pitch: her arms were crossed against the cold as she beamingly congratulated him on a victorious win at Quidditch against Slytherin.

A passing walk by a window allowed me a view of them holding hands while taking a stroll around the grounds.

He kissed her cheek on a spring morning in the courtyard leaving it blushing red.

Graduation. A kiss. A tear. A laugh. A sigh.

Whispered words from fellow Death Eaters, less than a year later, James Potter and Lily Evans are to be married.

My heart bleated a strange rhythm, pumping its sluggish blood through enough and around to get by.

_Heart to stone. Stone to heart. _

_Laughter tastes bitter, sugar tastes sour. _

_My love for you strengthens hour upon hour..._


	4. Chapter 4 - Realisation

I saw James grimace slightly by whatever injury Sirius had sustained from their most recent raid they had attempted to thawrt. They were so numerous and sporadic in location that each Order member was being pulled up and down the country at a moment's notice. 'Well anyway mate I'm going now, I'll speak to you tomorrow at the meeting, or I guess later today really. Get that cut seen to will you?'

I heard Sirius proclaim a sigh from the other end of the mirror at his concern and spoke with hardly supressed mirth. 'Yes mummy dear I'll sort it, would you like me to clean my room while I'm at it or can that wait?' I could practically _see_ Sirius' grin breaking out through the back of the mirror as James infinitesimally narrowed his eyes at him before giving his head a slight shake with a roll of his eyes.

'Night Pads.' He threw the mirror glass side down on the sofa which muffled Sirius' protest of rudeness and of where was his bedtime story, before giving a huge yawn and scrubbing his hand over his face in a weary sort of way. Silence enveloped us as Sirius abandoned the mirror so did the last of his laughter.

Even though he took the war mostly all in his stride, the riots, the raids, the fighting, it never escaped James how very close we all were to dying most days of the week. I feared tonight that it was starting to grate on him. I stood and kneeled in front of him, taking his hands in my own. For the first time in living memory of holding them they were chilled and shaking slightly from the dregs of the fight.

'Sweetheart,' I whispered gently and he lifted his head it seemed with a little effort. I reached up and slid his glasses from his face, folded them at the hinges then placed them on the coffee table to my right. I heard him sigh a little and he gave me a weak sort of smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Even though I had seen James without his glasses countless of times, he still looked slightly awkward without them.

My hands ghosted up to brush my fingertips over his strong jaw which was slightly rough with stubble and half healed scratches. They then smoothed out the lines of his forehead, his creamy pale skin soft here and I sort to rub my thumbs up and down in what I hoped a soothing action across his temples. James closed his eyes against my touch and simply let my fingers and palms caress his face.

I studied the face I had come to love so much over the years and even now felt the ghost of a butterfly in my stomach. I knew every minor detail of it but searched it hungrily nevertheless. There was a slightly depressed mark just about his left eyebrow from a chicken pocks scar. He had caught the infection in his youth from a Muggle child in his village that he had played with and although his parents had tried their hardest with him, James had scratched insistently; even then he was strongly willed. He had steered clear from all Muggle children for weeks after that until his father explained that it was an illness and that they didn't give it to you every time you went near them.

My fingertips swept down to his mouth which parted when I brushed them lightly and I felt his hot breath on my palm. His upper lip was fuller than it should be in comparison with the bottom lip making them slightly unbalanced, although I held no objections. His sideburns weren't completely a hundred percent level on either side of his face either as he hadn't got the hang of his new Muggle razor that I had bought him for Christmas. He was used to having one which he just told what he wanted it to do. He refused to give up with it and said that it was merely character building when Sirius commented laughingly on his lopsided appearance whilst spearing a brussel sprout with his fork at Christmas dinner.

'It will be alright.'

'Yeah.' He replied in a voice with little emotion, his face suddenly becoming more drawn than I had ever seen it.

'James,' I whispered imploringly. I cradled his face and brushed my thumb under his eye to wipe away the tear that had suddenly escaped. His breathing was becoming laboured, his chest hitching in strange places whilst his cheeks were flushing rogue and blotchy. Then without warning, his whole face crumpled in paralysing grief as he finally seemed unable to hold back and succumbed to sobs of misery.

'James.' My throat was becoming painfully tight and my voice cracked against my own struggles for composure. I had never seen him cry before and it nothing less than broke my heart. 'Look at me – James – look at me.' With trembling lips and streaming eyes he raised his head with an enormous effort.

'If we didn't think we could win, then we wouldn't still be fighting.' The fierceness of my voice and my conviction managed to pierce his despair for a moment which appeared to give him some clarity. We gazed imploringly into each other's eyes for an immeasurable amount of time. As I stared into his eyes something within me seemed to settle deep down into the very core of my being. I don't know why but it was only then that I realised what I had failed to notice for months now. By letting his guard down and showing me at his most vulnerable, it allowed me to take everything and all of him into myself and let him fit there perfectly.

'I love you.'


	5. Chapter 5 - The Solider Part 1

I hope you enjoy my latest chapter, I would love to get some feedback on my story so far :)

* * *

-x-

* * *

My feet traipse the familiar path alongside and above the dirty river running quick and dark below me. The grin of the half-moon high up in the sky illuminates my way but I do not need its light. I knew the way immeasurably well. My strides are quicker even than my usual fast pace so the little thicket of trees comes into fruition in only moments. I had not been back here in years and was not sure what the emotions swirling in the pit of my stomach were. I glance up at the canopy of branches, the whisperings and mutterings of the wind making the dark leaves rattle jittery against each other. The screeching of a fox makes angry prickles erupt over my skin in alarm but then something much more tangible diverts my attention.

A wand tip suddenly burns almost overwhelming bright in the gloom and for a split second I think that I've walked into an ambush. Electricity runs along my nerves, my muscles contract and my bones aim my wand threatening aloft but it falls again in quick succession to my thigh when a voice murmurs through the dark.

'Would you really curse me Sev, after all this time?'

Automatically without thought I light my own wand so that the figure not much shorter than my own comes into gloomy view. Lily, a few feet away from me with wand delicately in front of her, held me with a magnetic gaze and enigmatic expression suffused within the bloodlessness of her skin. Grief and strangely something like panic thundered through me with so much force I find it difficult to keep myself upright and the composure I didn't realise I had been upholding for years in place. It had been evidently hard, even some days it felt impossible not seeing her but only after all these years apart did the full enormity of the gaping crater that was her departure came into apparent realisation.

'What – what are you doing here?' I rasped at her with a dry throat.

Lily began to smile but then it trembled on the soft plush of her lips and her face crumpled in supposed anguish.

'I've – I've been such a fool Sev!' She whispered, tears threatening to overspill her lashes. Confusion intermingled with the panic now until I was finding it almost impossible to string any sort of coherent thoughts together. She was here, really here, in front of me. Lily … She was dressed in plain black robes with the hood pulled up to form a lip over the crown of her head; her dark red hair fell to her shoulders as always and looked almost black in the gloom. Everything was just how I remembered it, the cupid's bow of her lips, her collarbone blushing beneath her throat and the slim willowy fingers that trembled on her wand.

'I don't understand –'

The tears escaped and she half turned as if to conceal the shame. Spontaneously my legs began to drop and fall until I was in touching distance of her but I held back even when Lily began speaking, her body in a slight rotation away from mine.

'I'm so sorry for everything that I've done, said … Everything's been a complete disaster. I've been trying to leave for ages but I haven't managed to before now, it's been difficult what with being in the Order. And – and …,' Lily's eyes found mine again and there was something there that I had never before seen, something akin to fear. 'Potter and I are finished. I don't know what I was thinking when we – when, I thought …' She trailed off again swallowing thickly. I didn't breathe; I didn't dare think or believe. Could this possibly mean?

'I still don't understand.' I manage to get out a little louder than a whisper. Beads of sweat begin to roll down my back and both heart and breath speed to uncomfortable heights. Despite this I couldn't disengage my eyes from Lily's which were so close and which I had not been able to look into for so long.

'I wanted to see you.' Her statement was simple but it seems to charge the air between us in a complexity that had never been present before this instant. I tried to stay calm but I felt the universe closing in on the two of us, an unstoppable force against two unmovable objects.

'Lily-,'

'Sev-,' Before I knew what was happening she placed her fingers on the nape of my neck and pulled me to meet her awaiting lips. Shock obliterated everything from my mind until it was nothing more than a great vacuum and for once in my life I could no longer think anymore, only feel. None of the countless imaginings compared to the real thing. Her mouth was not velvet soft but rough, real and acted like a key in a lock to emotions I didn't even realise I could summon.

I brushed my fingers through thick, sweet smelling tresses of her hair and she sighed with parted lips deeply-

I felt the scorching burn of my left forearm as if flames licked the delicate white skin there.

Lily vanished.

I opened my eyes and it was over.

A quiet eruption of misery began in my bones and seeped into the tissues of my body, pressing up against the skin making me feel bloated and immobile. I lay on my back looking up at the blackened ceiling knowing that steadily all the resolution in my life was being blown out.

I could just stay here and lay here forever; I _wanted_ to stay here forever. In my dingy London flat where nobody but I had paced the sticky carpet and breathed in the desolation and despair. But the flash of scorching heat of my left forearm was still tingling from the order to stand to attention. The solider needed to respond and return for duty.

It took more energy than I would have cared to admit to, but I stood, dressed and hurried quiet as shadows out of my flat to the wooded shroud of the park to the back and left of my building. Before I twisted into obscurity I paused to gather myself. I looked up to see a smattering of stars winking out from clouds that skated across the swirling sky. The air was crisp and it cut like a knife in my chest; I tried to catch the white cloud of my breath with my fist but it disappeared before I flexed my fingers upwards. Just like everything else, I was just that bit too late.

I touched a single finger to the Dark shadow on my arm and spun into the relish of oblivion.

My feet barely hit the polished oak floor before I heard the hiss.

'_You're late, Severus_.'

I glanced my eyes upwards to see Voldemort standing in front of a large sash window looking out onto darkened grounds; the illumination of the full moon gave him an eerie spotlight. His back was turned making his expression ambiguous but his voice radiated anger. Even though he could not see me, I bent my spine into a low bow.

'My deepest apologises, my Lord.'

'We have a crucial engagement that you have delayed us with.' At the Dark Lord's words I turned to find Lucius Malfoy sat in a high-winged back chair. He was in full Death Eater attire so only his cold grey eyes were visible to the outside world.

Without warning, the Dark Lord turned and faced me. His scarlet eyes burned startlingly against the glare of the moon making them more intense, his wand rested gently in his fingers like a serpent ready to strike. The silence stretched on for what felt like an eternity and yet I stood perfectly calm with eyes never leaving his.

'Never be late again.'

'No my Lord, you have my word.'

For want of a better word, a smile curved his lipless mouth.

'Then let us join the celebrations.'


	6. Chapter 6 - Once Of Three Times Part 1

Warning: In this chapter there maybe things that more sensitive readers might find upsetting. Also, would again love some feedback on my Story so far, it's nice to know theres someone out there reading! :) x

* * *

-x-

* * *

It was a tip off from a Wizard undercover in the emergency call centre where Muggles go through to when they dial 999 that sent the Order members Apparating to a lonely street in Portsmouth. The information that had been relayed to us was that a group of Death Eaters were terrorising a Muggle street.

Darkness enveloped us as our feet planted the slippery cobbled streets. I smelt the moist, thick air laced with salt; it was sharp at the back of my nose and throat. I could hear the raging sea nearby, crashing against the balustrades and the resounding splatter as it over spilled them. The weather was much wilder here than it was in Godrics Hollow and it took a moment for me to get my bearings. The wind was a strong invisible force barrelling towards us from a westerly direction, bringing with it torn leaves and icy raindrops. My eyes drew to the florescent orange spotlights of the streetlamps lining the opposite, deserted street, the only relief from the gloom: the trees on either side being battered by the gale made for their branches to look like clawing hands of shadow puppets in the wake of its unnatural light.

Then suddenly, a child's perilous cry, as fragile as a spider's web in spring carried on the wind toward us on its rushed power, screaming the hairs on the back of my neck to attention. My heart rate spiked beyond a hundred: my chest tightened, my blood pounded and the ring on my shaking left hand clinked against the wood of my wand. I was ready.

'This way,' Fabian called and he hurriedly led the small group of Order members down a flight of stone steps directly to our right; the impenetrable darkness fuelled our sense of uncertainty and foreboding. Like the scream, the sounds of the Death Eaters seemed oddly amplified with the wind. I could hear gales of rowdy male laughter, more screaming and canon like blasts. In my haste to get to the fray, I slipped on the slick steps and James quickly threw out a hand to steady me. As he let go off my hand I brushed my fingertips with his for just a moment longer. The notion escaped my conscious thought but I suddenly couldn't bear to not be touching him and feel his warm skin. For reasons I couldn't fathom it started to put knots in my stomach. I felt more than heard his head turn slightly in my direction and he entwined our fingers; somehow understanding my thoughts without them being articulated. Perhaps it was because of how we had been interrupted from one of our rare times together; the dregs of his touch not quite having left my skin made me want to be closer. As we were both full time fighters for the Order and going off on missions around the country, it was challenging to catch many intimate moments together. The present only just becoming past stirred in the forefront of my mind of the two of us only minutes before in the darkness together, feeling James' hot breath bathing my face, I couldn't help but feel so very overwhelmingly safe. And then the patronus had flown through the wall and Sirius' hurried voice brought news of a muggle attack and the magic was broken.

We ran hand in hand and turned the corner. Death Eaters in black cloaks and masks were meandering down the two rows of terraced houses lining either side of the street with wands aloft; their numbers vast and outstripping our own. Doors from the houses that they had past were blasted apart into pitiful splitters from where they had forced entry to murder the residency. Some were left desolate and empty, others left blazing. There was a tingling of breaking glass far up ahead and a dark form floated out of a first story window by invisible ties, bellowing and sobbing with terror. It sounded like a teenage boy no older than sixteen. The assailant out of view inside the house released the Muggle from their control, he dropped from the sky for only seconds with an ear-splitting scream before being silenced by a flash of green light. If felt like there would never be a time in my life anymore when the sickening thud of his body would not reverberate around my head. The Prewetts: the Longbottoms, Benjy Fenwick, Dorcas Meadowes, Sirius, James and I charged forward.

'Expelliarmus, incarcerous!' I bellowed as I ran ahead managing to ensnare and disarm a Death Eater before he could block me; he fell, impossibly overwhelmed in black ropes to the ground unable to move. A slew of killing curses flew towards us and James and I disbanded just in time to avoid them; the curses that missed their targets blew apart the houses on either side of us. Shrapnel sailed dangerously in every which way with pings of metal embedding themselves into flesh and brick. I felt a sharp shard of something cut along the top of my scalp leaving a smarting trail behind. The Death Eaters were advancing on us fast as were we with curses flying haphazardly close to surviving Muggles home.

'Cave inimicum, protego totalum, protego horribilis!' I cried at a few houses on my left making complicated figure of eight motions with my wand and aiming far up above the dwellings for the protection to entomb them. I knew perhaps in vain that my charms wouldn't hold for long but it was worth a try at least to buy the people inside some time. Another jet of green light flew towards me which I stooped to avoid and sent a stunner at him that missed by an inch; it soared into a window - shattering it. The Death Eater advanced on me, wand arm raised in the air threateningly with his mask covering his face with only his eyes visible.

We began to duel. Killing curse after killing curse shot from his wand tip at me without relenting as I tried to pay him back in kind, although never aiming to kill. They whistled past me, colliding with guttering and window ledges. I had a feeling that he knew that I was Muggle-born for the ferociousness of his attacking strategy was almost hungry for my demise. Without warning a shot of blue flame hit my assailant by surprise. He gave a scream of agony before kneeling over clutching his knees. I had no idea who cast the spell and had no time to ponder on its effects.

'_Levicorpus_!' I thought whilst flicking my wand upwards at the fallen Death Eater. He rose ungainly through the air still trying to nurse his knee caps by the ankle; his robes fell over his head to reveal that his knees had appeared to have switched gruesomely around on the opposite side of his legs. As the Death Eater was hoisted in the air I saw a hooded figure emerge from a house a little way down the street, obviously alerted by the noise of our arrival. I saw him raise his wand and with it launch a mass of flames upon a house in front of him which they hadn't yet raided. The fire began to lick itself in through the top floor with terrifying speed, exploding the windows with the sweltering heat and burning anything in its way.

'We have to get them out of there!' I heard Dorcas yell from out of nowhere to my left as she successfully managed to stun a random Death Eater in the face making him drop like a lead weight. I could see that the pupils of her large, ochre eyes were huge with fear in the momentary flashes of lights that illuminated them. A channel of understanding passed between us as we regarded each other for that split second with bared teeth. We both knew that the Death Eaters had no plans to disappear anytime soon and would therefore try to cause maximum damage. I flicked my wand again with the counter curse at my airborne prisoner and he plummeted ten feet headfirst and did not move.

'I'm on it!' I shouted. My wand sliced and spun through the air firing any and all incantations that came into my head, panic setting in as the house continued to burn into an inferno. Suddenly a sound of an explosion cleaved the air in two and for one wild moment I thought that one of the houses had finally been blown up. However Gideon Prewett and an unknown Death Eater who he had been fighting fiercely appeared to have used two spells that had detonated on contact, the result being that a huge crater had been carved into the road. Gideon fired a bright white spell at the Death Eater and he was blasted off his feet barely missing a comrade who side-stepped him just in time.

An idea had abruptly occurred to me. I ran forwards as best as I could into no man's land, dodging and ducking under a heavy deluge of spells that was coming at us from all sides, trying to get closer.

'LILY WHERE ARE YOU GOING?' James roared. I spun around to where he was battling two Death Eaters at once; his head was bleeding profusely from being hit by debris or from something more sinister, I couldn't tell. My lack of concentration however cost me dearly. In my peripheral vision I caught sight of a violently orange curse coming towards me and I turned too late to deflect it. I was hit in the chest with such force that I was knocked backwards to the ground; smacking my head on the concrete and rubble. Lights imploded in front of my eyes and my breathing was coming out in wheezes with what tasted like smatterings of blood. I could distantly hear someone calling my name and it took me a second to remember where I was. I could feel the stickiness of blood flowing freely down my neck and back and my head throbbed to such an agonizing level that my eyes struggled to remain open. I had no idea what I had been hit with but it felt like my ribs were slowly turning inwards intent on piercing my lungs. Needless to say it was torture.

'Protego!' My head lolled sideways on the street to the sound of my protector and with it its accompanying blow of air that shrouded my body. Sirius, no doubt alerted by James' frustrated yells of trying to help me had just retracted his wand from my direction before casting his own protective enchantment against a particularly vicious looking spell aimed at him.

With a tremendous amount of effort I managed to swing my legs round so that they curled by my side so I could face forward.

'Defodio!' I croaked wetly, aiming at the road ahead where the vast majority of the Death Eaters stood facing us. The solid road under their footing collapsed as a large depression was made in the cement making them fall with surprise into the earth. Struggling to my feet and to maintain my balance, I spun on the spot letting darkness press all around me until I was relieved a moment later in front of the blazing building; I had managed to Apparate behind the Death Eaters undercover of the noise. On this side of the battle I could hear the screaming from inside the house.

I pointed my wand at my head casting the bubble head charm and then at my condensing chest.

'F-Finite incantatum!' Nothing happened. It must have been powerful dark magic. I curled my right arm helplessly around my cracking ribs then barrelled into the house. The heat and noise was overwhelming. Immediately I felt sweat sliding down my face and back as I tried to see through the engulfing black smoke. The fire had burnt through the ceiling with ease and most of the downstairs was ablaze, smouldering timbers crackled overhead and embers fell like fire flies causing the curtains to set alight.

'AGUAMENTI!' I swept my wand across the room trying to douse as much fire as I possibly could before a distant coughing scream overhead fisted my stomach together in iron cladding. There wasn't enough time to try to battle the flames and find the stairs and yet this was an unfamiliar house, if I Apparated wrong … I screwed up my face in concentration and turned on the spot. I reappeared at the top of the stairs a second later and came face to face with a wall of flames that almost knocked me backwards. The hem of my robes instantaneously caught fire along with my socks and laces, the rubber soles of my trainers melted so fast to the landing carpet I felt myself sink. The flames scorched my skin unbearably and I cried out in pain as I tried to put myself out jumping from one foot to the other.

'AGUAMENTI!' I held my wand aloft across my path, taking my free arm away from my ribs to shield my head from the dropping cinders. The compressing flames, the terror, the pain all started to become overwhelming for me as I tried to view a door handle or a face. Bloody spittle dribbled down my chin and neck as it became almost impossible to breathe with my crushed lungs.

'Homenum revelio!' My wand arm vibrated and seemed to form an invisible string of humming thread between my wand and what I knew to be a person that guided me to the end of the landing. Mercifully through the thick smoke and flames a brass door handle materialised.

'Alohomora!' A faint click signified the door unlocking and I kicked out at it with my foot but it didn't budge. It was almost as if something was lodged on the other side of the door. My stomach squirmed in panic. _I'm too late_.

'Deprimo!' The door blasted open so it hung limply on its hinges and to my relief I saw nothing but a bundle of towels that had been put down to try and stop the smoke getting in. I stepped into the bathroom and saw that the shower curtain had been drawn. I pulled it back. Lying and squashed together in the bathtub was a young man holding hands with a woman I presumed to be his wife and nestled in between them was a little girl no older than four. All of them were unconscious. Dread started to swell in my brain like an infection. Looking at them seemed to open up some sort of dam inside me which lay to rest all of my self-control. I felt every burn, every ache, every cracked and in growing rib. Instead of the lifeless family, I now saw James, Sirius, Remus, Peter. I saw everyone who ever meant anything to me, all their faces flashing in front of my eyes one after the other. Hot tears stung my eyes and flooded down my face rolling over the bubble covering my nose and mouth. My knees gave way to the crushing realisation and succumbed to collide with the titled floor. It felt like there was a Dementor in the room draining the life out of me. All my resolve, my will power, everything lay to waste confronted with this little family. I had seen death before, friends and Order members slain in front of my very eyes. But it was more what they represented. How as time went on, lives we're being crushed under the weight of the Dark Lords regime helplessly. I saw a thin, pale bespectacled face with untidy jet black hair with a grin that always meant trouble. What if James, right this very moment had periled, when I could have helped him instead of standing here doing nothing …

_Get it together Lily, come on, keep going, stand and fight like you promised ... _

I raised my wand, screwing up my face and allowed a fury to overtake my body at the sight of what the Death Eaters had done. It was like a tsunami of fire had suddenly crashed and swept through my veins and arteries. It fired me back into action: I was not going to give up; I was never going to give in. We we're all going to fight to the death no matter what it took.

'Rennervate!' I cried and the jet of red light hit all three bodies in unison. Mercifully, _unbelievably,_ the family started to stir in the bathtub. There were only a few moments in my life that I could pinpoint that flooded me with such all-consuming joy such as this. My letter to Hogwarts, falling in love with James, looking into his blazing eyes as I said I do… They coughed and they spluttered back to life groggily as I scrambled to my feet unsteadily in their wake. Lights were starting to pop in front of my eyes from lack of oxygen travelling to my brain but this no longer concerned me. It was like a talisman of hope had roared to life to help kick start me like a shot of adrenalin in the jugular. I stood and repaired the bathroom door with a swift flick of my wand to try and stem the torrent of smoke that had got in from my inertia. Swivelling my eyes back to the family I tasted panic that had coated the back of my throat.

_How was I going to get them out?_

The young father struggled to straighten himself upright, but did so after a moment of manoeuvring himself away from his daughter who seemed to be in a state of petrification; the mother held her to her chest in silent desperation with tears streaming down her face. The man's light blue gaze came to rest on me and in an instant he recoiled in horrified terror. A second later I remembered the bubble head charm and how strange I must have looked.

'No please I beg you! Don't kill them, please I'll do anything!'

'Sir we have to leave now, there's no time to waste!' I outstretched my right hand to him urgently to take but he only flattened himself further against the tiled wall; his soot covered face contorted with fear with his eyes bulging out of their sockets.

'NO!'

I had a split second to make a decision. I pointed my wand and stunned him before he knew what had happened. As her husband slumped unconscious against the wall the mother tried to turn and face me, but I stunned her and her daughter in the next second. I levitated the three limp bodies to the hot ground at my feet and pushed them up to sit against the bathtub, taking their hands as quickly as I could. I knew the house would not hold for many moments longer under the tirade of fire that had assaulted it. I concentrated with all my might and turned on the spot flying into cool, crushing darkness with the dead weights of the family pulling on my right hand.

We slammed into the cobbled street and I was instantly hauled over by the heaviness of the bodies I still had hold off. I had Apparated two hundred yards from the spot that the Order and I had originally arrived not knowing where else to take them. I heaved myself back to my feet. For just a short moment, I allowed myself to survey the father, mother and little girl that I had saved from certain death. They all lay lifelessly on the cold, wet ground as innocent as you could possibly find any persons to be. I prayed that they would be safe here when they would wake up to a hopefully safe street. Without another moment's pause, I spun on the spot once more to be engulfed.

I Apparated to the corner, turned in to the street and couldn't help but falter. Since the several minutes of my departure, things had deteriorated dramatically. Bodies lay strewn face down on the ground with awkward limbs sticking out from their hurried falls. A water main had been hit by goodness knows what and was gushing a torrent of water over everything it reached; it clashed strangely against the black night and the light from the fires that consumed many of the houses nearby. I puffed a few feeble breaths into my disoriented body to propel myself forward and prepared to fight whilst tapping my head to rid myself of my bubble head charm. I was beyond properly computing the pain that I was in by this stage but nonetheless held my wand so tight that it cramped my left hand. Although I was Muggle-born, magic was so entrenched into my being it came naturally and without much effort; the spells came and met their victims in whatever way I wanted them to meet their end.

It was with stoic militancy that I proceeded into the fray again, sending all manner of curses at the still standing Death Eaters. I edged nearer doggedly, the war zone came to me oddly muffled and a large scoop of the commencing fear seemed to have been gouged away. From my position set back a little from the line of the Order, I could make out the backs of Alice, Frank, Dorcas, Benjy and Sirius. However, as many glances as I could spare, I could not for the life of me see where James and the others were. The fear that had momentarily trickled away began to creep back through my blood like a slow acting poison. My eyes flashed to the house that I had saved the family from. Could he possibly have followed me?

Before any other sort of ideas or actions could occur to me, the air was rent with a force to that of a bomb as the house exploded. I saw the nearest Death Eater to it be blown an infinite distance by the force across the street where he slammed into the opposing terraced house, dead and maimed. The other cloaked figures stumbled or even fell by the strength of the detonation as well as many of the Order members. As I was the furthest away from the blast I managed to remain upright; I disarmed and imprisoned two Death Eaters in their attempt to stand in quick succession with ropes.

In the new found disarray I scanned the street for James, this time in a crazed panic. He didn't follow me I thought desperately; I wound my trembling right arm around my chest against the grief that threatened to do it in. He merely was fighting out of my line of vision or at worse had been knocked out somewhere, lying amongst the rubble.

Edging closer all the time I searched and prayed and searched again. Death Eaters still remained but in lesser numbers than before to the point where we were equally matched, a rarity. It was obviously that everyone was beyond tired, soldiers in a fight that neither would leave until the other side lost.

'SIRIUS! Sirius, where's James?' Sirius was barely recognisable due to the dust and blood covering the entirety of his body and face. The only reason why I could distinguish him was because I knew him so well. His marred face turned in my direction after sending a questionable curse at a Death Eater a hundred yards off. As soon as his mouth opened I knew that my worse fear had been realised.

'He was looking for you! Haven't you-,' But before he could finish his sentence, his eyes glanced over my shoulder and he lunged with such speed that the spell that was aimed at us missed by millimetres. I had never felt in all my life such a powerful, _evil _spell in all my formative years in the magical world. Although it did not make a direct hit, the close proximity of the thing made my blood and that as well of Sirius' by his yell of shock, heat up alarmingly like a flash fire.

Undercover of the mayhem that was still ensuing, the noises behind us of the three new figures that had Apparated had been concealed. While there was two Death Eaters dressed with their masks and black robes on either side, Voldemort wore simple robes with his hood down needing and wanting no anonymity. He raised his deathly white hand with a sort of quiet grace, a leer illuminating his scarlet eyes, before he slashed it with such rapidity Sirius and I barely had time to dispel.

From the blast of boiling blood came an energy shot like adrenalin to a dying man. The – the being in front of me was the start and finish of it all. The ideals had always been here in this world, but he nurtured it, he fed it evil and ruthlessness and made people kill and slaughter innocent people for the cause. _Genocide_. Hatred imploded inside me to the point where the world fell by the wayside. All that existed was him and me. I aimed to kill.

'AVADA KEDAVRA!' I roared at the top of my lungs aiming straight for the face of Lord Voldemort. The jet of green that exploded out of my wand tip blinded my eyes for a moment. He sidestepped the little piece of soul I would be giving up for him, effortlessly laughing, while the two Death Eaters marched forward, both of whom seemed to vehemently want to take Sirius' life. There was no way that I could tell whether other people from the Order were assisting Sirius as all of my attention was being pulled into my own fight. My wand slashed and ripped through the air in a fury but no matter how hard I tried nothing was quite enough to touch him. Yet, nothing was quite enough to touch me either. I was not superior, yet nor was I inferior. Voldemort's leer contorted into a snarl as I continued to thwart him in his murderous crusade.

The ground grew hot underfoot, almost as if we were beneath a mass pit of lava from the magic that was permeating the air: rubble made it hazardous to gain any sort of footing, burning eyes from the smoke made it difficult to see. Yet I still carried on.

'Stupid girl, do not think that you can win against me, no one can!' Voldemort taunted me from a far. His voice was a hiss that travelled over all the commotion that was going on to entice me to defeat. Words failed me, so I simply bared my teeth to it. Yells, shouts and cries encompassed me like a cocoon of horror. James was missing; I had no idea if he was alive. I was waning with my chest impossible to negotiate into submission whilst trying to fight the world's most deadlest wizard of all time. I was barely a passable age to be deemed an adult and I was fighting for my life in a war that seemed insurmountable. I yearned to be young and carefree again. I wanted the only irks of my existence to be homework, exams and James Potter to make a negative dent on my day. I craved the walls of Hogwarts like an unborn baby to that of its mother's womb before its time was up.

Without warning, I heard an audible roar from behind.

'EXPULSO!' I swiveled my head upwards all but forgetting my immediate situation. Apparently taking inspiration from the explosion that had taken place moments before, a Death Eater had pointed their wand high above me. The roof that belonged to the house immediately to my right had been detonated. As if in slow motion, half the roof and chimney began to fall in an avalanche down toward me; my mind became a great blank upon which I made no effort to defend myself.

Seconds felt like an age. I looked to my left, hoping to find something familiar to look at before the inevitable. A Death Eater stood a few hundred yards up ahead where he stood quite still, wand raised. He shot a spell at me so bright you would not have been called foolish for thinking it to be a bolt of lightning.

Then several things all seemed to happen in very quick succession.

There was a roaring of noise as the debris began to pound my body. There was a searing pain where the spell hit me. Bellowing, screaming and shouting. There was a crack like a whip right behind me, a pair of strong arms, then crushing darkness and oblivion.

Wait…it couldn't be, could it?


	7. Chapter 7 - The Solider Part 2

The explosion of war hits my ears as soon as my feet slam against Mother Earth. Rubble and debris was scattered everywhere, houses were on fire, and a water main had been cleaved open and erupted water from its crater high into the sky. My eyes were drawn like flame to oxygen at the dark huddles of the dead, their facelessness sucking me into their silence. To my left I hear a quiet laugh from Lord Voldemort who stood breathing in the battle in a demure way, drinking in the ecstasy of death like a honeybee to a flower.

And then I see a face that had its own magnetism to it. A face that squeezed adrenalin into my veins; the opportunity to have revenge is sweet after all. I raised my wand to the distant, bloodied form of Sirius Black who was talking to someone whose back was to me and aimed. As the spell careered forwards he dived towards the figure in front and as they yelled in shock I hear her voice, I see long red hair so unlike what it was a mere hour ago in my dream.

Lily was here. The fully reality of the situation hits me like a bomb and as she turns around and takes us in, I cannot even read her expression. Her wand free arm is clutching at her ribs in such a way as if she cannot breathe and I instantly know how injured she is. Her face is covered in soot, dirt and blood so much so that she's almost unrecognisable. She looks much older and much more beautiful than I had ever seen before or remembered. But then I see a kind of hatred on her soft pretty features of the likes I've never encountered previously. She raises her wand to Voldemort and screams.

'AVADA KEDAVRA!'

The moment of fiery revenge dissipates to an icy weight. Lily was going to be killed by Voldemort, I couldn't watch it happen. Malfoy and I advance on Black whose teeth were bared with a kind of ferocity. As killing curse after killing curse starts to overwhelm him I see the pathetic desperation in his face.

Why did he ever think he was better than me?

All of a sudden as he dodges one of my curses his foot connects with a piece of rubble and he stumbles and falls. But before I could strike the final blow to the man who'd made my life a misery, the Prewett brothers bound forward out of nowhere and my attention is diverted. Other Death Eaters start to join the fray until it's only a matter of time before it will be over for all of them.

But then without warning in my peripheral vision I see something that takes me out of my own present. A Death Eater standing a little away suddenly shoots a jet of light above Lily who was still fighting Voldemort. I cannot feel relieved that she has somehow survived the duel as the chimney of the house and half the roof abruptly explodes. The bricks and mortar starts to fall like rain down upon her.

Her head turns left and for the first time in years Lily is looking straight at me. Without warning as if she was actually speaking the words across the way to me at that very moment, I can hear her words ringing in my head.

'_You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine.'_

_My new cloak and mask feel like the robes of a King as I kneel in front of Lord Voldemort. My white arm is held in his hand as the onlookers of other Death Eaters encircle us in complete silence. _

'_Do you Severus Snape, give your life to the service of the Death Eaters?'_

'_I do.' _

I raise my wand and point it at her.

'_Do you hereby swear you allegiance to your master Lord Voldemort above all others?'_

'_I do.'_

The spell blinded me as it sailed and hit her squarely in the chest.

'_I now announce you Severus Snape, Death Eater and servant to me that only death shall dissolve. Let your life time of service…begin.' _

_At Voldemort's last hiss of his sentence, he touched the tip of his wand to my forearm where on contact my skin burned black and morphed into something I'd never seen before or imagined. Through the haze of pain, I looked up into the livid scarlet eyes and saw the leer of a smile on the skull like face. _

Why was Lily not moving? A tsunami of panic rampaged through my veins. I needed to help, I needed to save her, but I couldn't. My breath wouldn't come, my eyes were blown wide, I was about to see the love of my life die in front of me.

But then there was a crack. Through the dust, debris and spells I saw the white gold wedding band on their left hands join together and it feels as if a bright white spot light is scorching my eyes shut. James Potter and his wife disappear and escape death as half the house collapses down onto thin air.


	8. Chapter 8 - Once Of Three Times Part 2

I was slammed into hard ground that just about did me in. My head swam so painfully that tears started to seep from under my eyelids and sweep the length of my cheek and neck. My body was screaming in pain, there was not one inch of skin that had reprieve. And then it came to me, I felt it. The edge. It had finally materialised.

In the Order, the edge had been eluded to many times. It was like a promise of a shadow on all of us at dusk. No one ever openly discussed it but we were all very aware of what it was and what it looked like. In Primary school, I remember studying the First World War and hearing Mrs Atkinson, my history teacher, talk about the 'thousand yard stare.' It was where war veterans became so traumatised that they would have this disconnected, glazed look in their eyes. Seeing the things that we saw and the situations that we were in being full time fighters for the Order it was bound to have some sort of effect. When you saw that look in someone's eyes, you knew that they had hit it.

I smelt wet grass, rain and a strong perfume of smoke that had permeated my clothes and skin. I daren't open my eyes. I knew I wasn't dead but that didn't mean much these days. Your heart could be beating fine, your anatomy could be perfect in every way but if your mind was broken, what was the point? I knew not whether the person that had Apparated us to safety was friend or foe and I was too exhausted to find out. I heard muted, muffled sounds as if someone was talking to me, but I was so on the brink of consciousness that I was mildly surprised that I was still semi attentive. I felt desperate hands trying to rouse me but to no avail.

As I lay on the freezing wet ground, the earth span as my eyes remained tightly shut, trapping me in the most uncertain world I had ever been in before in my life. The pain was horrific in its campaign of agony that it had declared on my body. However in all the confusion I struggled to understand something. My ribs were no longer crushing me to within an inch of my life. They ached as if I had been trampled by an angry Hippogriff but there was no constriction, no ingrowing ribs. Before I could even attempt to make sense of this, something began to repeatedly tap me all over my body. My skull: my forehead, my shoulders, my limbs, everywhere. The throbs and anguish started to blissfully float away like a caught snowflake on the tongue, it all melted away until everything merely hummed.

My head eased. I opened my eyes.

'I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!' James yelled in equal measure of fury and despair as he held me by my recently healed shoulders painfully tight. I gazed up into his bespectacled blood shot eyes as they hovered over me only inches from my face.

He was alive.

I was so relieved I couldn't even encapsulate into words or make sense of it to myself how it made me feel even if I tried.

When I made no attempt to reply, he gave a frustrated cry and buried his face to my chest rasping words that I could not distinguish. His whole body was trembling from head to foot either from sobs or from the dregs of adrenalin that still remained from the fight, I couldn't tell. James raised his head after several long moments and began wetly kissing my face, my neck, anywhere where there was exposed skin.

'Come on,' he said hoarsely. 'Let's get you inside.' I wouldn't have even been able to remember how to move even if I wanted to, so James lifted me as gently as possible and starting walking. It appeared that we had Apparated on the edge of the forest to the field on the right of the house and it took us several minutes to arrive at the back door under cover of darkness.

For several moments, James awkwardly aimed at the doorknob with his grasped wand whilst still holding me, but after a second it clicked open.

I hoped the neighbours didn't see us, I thought vaguely, not remembering that they would be in bed. We struggled up the tight, narrow staircase making it up into the bathroom finally where I was placed with tenderness on the floor.

James pulled with some difficulty my robes over my held whilst still trying to in some semblance holster me sitting upright. He balanced his knees on either side of my legs to keep himself steady as he removed me of my clothing and waited for the bath to fill itself. James rested back slightly on his haunches and brought me with him so I could feel his collarbone against my forehead.

I was beyond exhausted in every way that a person can feel devoid of energy; emotional, physically, mentally. But even in my drained state, a warmth of feeling glowed to life as I felt James' fingers run down my bare spine and twirl strands of my hair round his fingers in a subconscious action that he sometimes took to when we were together. I concentrated on breathing in, deep and slow, letting his scent accumulate itself into every cell of my body. My brain finally assented to the crush of sleep to drown me and hold me under heavily.

I awoke momentarily when I was plunged gently upwards out of the warm water and again when James rested me in bed, dry, clean and monstrously bruised. I heard against the backdrop of rain and wind that seemed to have finally blown up from Portsmouth that James was shrugging himself free of clothes before climbing in next to me. With the secure feeling of James' body pressed flush up against mine I fell off the edge of consciousness.

* * *

It took me awhile to realise that I was actually waking up and not still in a state of unconsciousness. From the way my body felt stiff and aching, I thought I must have been asleep for a long time but I was unsure. It felt almost akin to having an enormous hangover rather than surviving a raid the night previous. Moving my hand to my right I felt the emptiness in the bed where James had vacated it; it was cold and I wondered how long ago he had gotten up. Lying on my back I stared up at the white ceiling in grey light and inevitably memories from the evening came to mind.

After joining the Order of the Phoenix after graduating from Hogwarts I had been in plenty of tight situations. In fact not a week went by when there wasn't any. However without a shadow of a doubt this raid had been different. There were so many chances that I could have died that night in so many different ways. I wondered whilst I continued to gaze up at the ceiling why it didn't fill me with terror, with relief, depression, anger, anything… Maybe I was cracking up after all.

I had fought Voldemort himself for goodness sakes …

However something did puzzle me the more I mulled over my memories. I remember fighting with Voldemort and then an explosion, a chimney of a house was raining down on me, but then …

There was that Death Eater to my right that shot that spell at me. My head began to hurt as I struggled to come up with answers that I knew were frustratingly on the periphery of my brain. As the minutes stretched on I finally puffed out a lung full of air in annoyance. It was no good, it just made no sense.

Upon waking, I never usually took long to feel energised but I struggled to find it in me to get moving. Every single muscle in my body ached and felt in a desperate state of weakness when I planted my feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. Trying my best to ignore the pounding in my head I padded quietly across the wooden floor boards with wand in hand and thought I might feel better after a cup of tea and some breakfast. I walked down the stairs with noisy, heavy footsteps with my head lulling on my shoulders, made it into the hall and stopped when I saw someone sitting in the living room.

'Looking good Lily,' Sirius commented with a grin that did not quite reach his grey eyes as I stood in his line of vision. I rolled my eyes at him, playing along as he seemed in no mood to be morose at the current moment. Trying to remain normal in the face of war and the personal bereavements that stabbed and clawed at you every few weeks, I found as time passed it was more an art to keep cheerful that you aspired to rather than really inhibiting.

'Speak for yourself.' I replied wryly as I made a show of looking him up and down, shaking my head to rid myself of anything but the immediate present. His face, especially the left side, was marred with a continuous sickly bruise that extended from below his jaw up to his hairline. Sirius repositioned himself a little in the armchair that he had claimed with barely a wince to give heed to his other injuries.

'_I_ happen to think it makes me look more handsome,' He continued. 'Not that, of course, I need to.' The grin now gracing his face _did_ reach his eyes when my eyebrows subconsciously rose into a blankly sardonic expression. Some things at least never changed I thought, internally smiling to myself. I walked into the living room raising my wand as I went; Sirius playfully held his hands up in surrender but I merely flicked it so that a tray of tea set for two landed smartly on the coffee table with a raised eyebrow. I reached forward to pour myself a cup of tea but Sirius in an uncharacteristic show of thoughtfulness took the pot from my hand and busied himself with tea strainers and milk.

'I'll be mother.'

I rolled my eyes again.

'Where's James?' I asked as I took my cup from Sirius and leaned back in an armchair taking a sip. The tea gratefully lessened the pounding in my head.

'Gone to the shops.' He murmured quietly. I nodded without him seeing and closed my eyes in the quietness of the room, listening to the rush of the wind outside. Having always grown up in a noisy street then moving into the chaotic walls of Hogwarts then London, moving to Godrics Hollow was a bit of a shock to the system. When I first moved the silence and inertia made me restless and on edge but now I don't know how I managed to never have a peaceful moment to myself.

The silence was broken abruptly however by Sirius who took a long drawn out slurp from his own dainty tea cup and saucer. I gave him a sharp look from under my eyelashes which he did not see for he was now deliberately paying rapt attention to brushing the single droplet of tea from its rim onto his saucer. His expression was arranged into a blissful and very annoying look of contentment with slightly pouted lips, which in short meant that he was going to be a complete pain in the arse from arrival to departure. These particular moods were both to entertain him and to rile me up as much as James would allow. However since he was out shopping for the time being, he could continue to his heart's content.

I shifted my position against the chair trying to steady my breathing against the pain humming in the flesh of my torso. I watched Sirius over the brim of my steaming cup as I put my feet on the coffee table and tried to flex the cold out of them. I had always thought that he was an old fashioned sort of handsome, Sirius, with his strong jaw and subtle cheekbones, the sort you would find back in the beginning of the twentieth century. I remembered the girls back at Hogwarts of all ages always fawning over him which he of course loved but rarely obliged to a girls invitation much to my surprise. He was much more interested with hanging around with the Marauders and getting up to things that I probably only had knowledge to a quarter to.

As much as he had irked me in the past, I had always quietly admired his principles. Just not how he displayed them, much like James himself really. It was inspiring how he held none of his aristocratic families' beliefs of Purebloods being almighty and had completely separated himself from the traditional name of Black. I had asked James about Sirius and his family once, but was only vaguely filled in on things that I had already been informed of by school hearsay. The confidences between Sirius and James were something that I could only barely penetrate, not out of mistrust of myself but of fierce loyalty to each other.

Feeling my gaze perhaps, he took to look me straight in the eye with a raised brow; the bravado slipping slightly at the look on my face. I chided myself at the idea that I was somehow relaying my thoughts through thin air and hastened to mimic his quizzical eye. I heard him almost silently take a quick little breath before hoisting up that expression that only Sirius could pull off before taking another sip of tea, this time with steady scrutiny across the china lip. I stared unblinkingly back as if we were playing some sort of game, until I noticed that when he lifted the cup to his mouth that his little finger was sticking out. Immediately my face broke into a grin that for all the world I would never have been able to repress. Sirius was the most macho guy I had ever met in my life and for him to drink tea like a six year old girl was _beyond_ funny. The more I thought upon the gesture the more impossible it was for me not laugh.

'What, pray tell, is so funny?'

'Oh, nothing.' I said waggling my own finger at him as I took a stuttering mouthful of warm liquid. Sirius froze for a fraction of a second in realisation and what skin of his face that was not bruised flushed pink as he set down his cup in his lap with narrowed eyes. Once however I had started to laugh, I was unable to stop. Great, guttural peals fell from my lips as my eyes swam with tears of pain and mirth. My ribs screamed in protest at such effort to gasp in breaths of air but it was although the moment of joy was releasing every stress and strain which I had shouldered for too long. I took my feet off the coffee table and settled my tea with quaking fingers upon its top to stop it from tipping all over the carpet in my moment of madness. I looked up at Sirius from where I was clutching my sides and saw that his face was desperately trying to work his face out of a smile at my humour back into composure.

'Well what can I say, you northern lasses have no finesse. You just tend to…_grab hold of things_.' My laughter was instantly stemmed into silently surprised shock at his evident meaning. Sirius' face grew into a satisfied smirk just as I heard the rattle of the door being unlocked and opened from just outside the living room. I heard James in the hall struggling with plastic bags of shopping, attempting to kick off his trainers and take off the invisibility cloak all at once.

'Lily?' I heard James call for me obviously wondering whether I was awake yet. I heard him curse to himself when he dropped a bag to the floor accidentally; something metal clanked against the hard tiles of the floor, a tin of cat food no doubt.

'Prongs! We we're just talking about you, weren't we Lily?' James poked his head round the corner at Sirius' voice and he sighed with relief to see that I was at least feeling up to getting out of bed.

'Really?' He asked as he bent down to pick up the fallen bag. Even though he wore a thick coat and scarf I could see the chill of the downturn in the weather on his pink hands and cheeks. My own face glowed red against my will and it was difficult to comprehend how Sirius' grin could be any bigger on his face as he gave me a saucy wink.

I struggled for several moments to think of a retort but resorted to simply sticking my tongue out at him and getting up to help James with the shopping.

'Lily, its fine I can manage, go sit back down and rest!' James implored when I tried to take a shopping bag from him from behind. He simply sidestepped me, gave me a quick kiss and went to fetch the others. I scowled at him as he came in again.

'James I'm not an invalid, it's only the shopping. I'm not wrestling a bloody dragon!'

'Honestly it won't take me two seconds - I know where everything goes anyway-'

'No you don't! I found the washing powder in with the bake beans the other day-'

'What's wrong with that?'

'It was in the fridge!'

'God, would you listen to yourselves? You bicker like an old married couple!' Sirius exclaimed while entering the kitchen with the remaining bags in hand and like James, he lithely evaded me when I tried to seize them.

'Sirius we _are_ married. That was the whole point of _our_ wedding.' He simply rolled his eyes at me, dumped the bags and hopped up onto the kitchen countertop and picked up an avocado with interest from the fruit bowl, giving it an experimental sniff.

'What's this?'

'It's an avocado.' I said raising my eyebrows whilst bending down with trouble to fork out some cat food for Gerald when James wasn't looking: despite my demands of things to do, I was still sore all over from bruises. I whistled for Gerald but there was no sign of a fluffy white tail anywhere; probably out hunting, I mused. I looked up to see Sirius attempt to eat the avocado as it was with a grimace.

'You have to cut it open Sirius and then eat it.'

'Oh, I thought it wasn't very nice.' I reframed from rolling my eyes with difficulty.

I leant against the doorframe and watched James unpack the shopping whilst Sirius recovered a knife from the draw and sliced it down its green middle. As I stood following my husband with my eyes my mind drifted to another husband, the one whom I had saved from his burning house. All of a sudden it became very difficult to swallow and it took me a few attempts to finally manage it. What happened if I didn't save them after all? When the Death Eaters disbanded after who knows when (when more reinforcements arrived, when there was no one left to kill?) did they come across their bodies? Did they kill them like what would have happened if I had not intervened and yet they would have been together, driven into unconsciousness before any pain befouled them? Or did they torture them and maimed them like so many other unfortunate souls. Hot acid burned my stomach as the poor little girl's face came into view, nestled against her mother and father...

'Lily?' My head snapped up as James' voice roused me. He was staring me straight in the eye in such a way that I knew I could not and must not lie my way out of his concern. But I didn't want to talk about it. The guilt and the terror wanted to remain undisrupted in my head, festering in quiet moments and in the dark hours of the night. I avoided his gaze and Sirius's whom I could see in my peripheral vision and glanced at the worktop. The Daily Prophet lay yellowed and followed on its surface which gave me the perfect opportunity to change the subject.

'What did they say it was this time?' I tried to ask nonchalantly of James whilst he continued to gaze at me with almost hardness behind his glasses.

'A second world war bomb that had deactivated in someone's back garden which had been buried.'

'Not bad,' I say trying to be as blasé as possible whilst I turn around and head back into the living room.

'Lily-'

'What? They can't keep saying it's a gas leak all the time can they?'

I reclaimed by vacated armchair again and jabbed my wand at my lone cup of tea which began to smoke hot again. I could hear low murmuring in the kitchen. Annoyance nettled me as I sat there sipping trying to ignore the vibrations of the men's voices. As I rose my cup to my lips to drain it a sudden, most obvious thought occurred to me which filled me with poisonous dread.

'James?' I called in a slightly quivering voice. A second later he was a few feet in front of me. James watched me for a few moments with his tired hazel eyes, taking in my anguished face before speaking in a low, constricted voice.

'Fabian and Gideon didn't make it. Before we left apparently they were fighting off five Death Eaters between them and – and …' He trailed off, whether unable to finish his sentence or at the fact that my lips were trembling I did not know. James moved towards me just as I stood on tip toes to wrap my arms around his neck. Resting my chin on his shoulder I saw Sirius limp into view. I hadn't noticed the redness in his eyes.


	9. Chapter 9 - Reprieve

'Wouldn't it be more, _prudent,_ my Lord, to not kill her. As you know for yourself, she could be valuable to our cause. She is skilled in Potion making and Charms particularly.' I placed my hands with delicacy on the arms of the high backed chair that I resided in: it was made of stiff leather that had not been worn in yet and I daren't move despite the rigidness that was setting a pain in my back. The room was grand, airy and I would have suffered from the chill of its vastness if it wasn't for the grate that was burning in full to my left. The Death Eater congregation had passed to leave the dining room of Malfoy's manor house empty to hold the conversation opposite my Master in much needed privacy.

The scarlet slits bored into my black eyes for a long, silent moment. For want of a better word, a smile curved Voldemort's thin mouth as he surveyed me from his similar armchair.

'I do not need a Potioneer Snape, you are more than capable are you not?'

'Yes I am my Lord, however-,' I began but was silenced immediately by a single white long finger.

'As you well know Severus, she has no interest in joining us, nor does her husband as I have already requested their elegance.' Voldemort's stare if possible intensified while my face remained adeptly impassive.

_Husband_… Acid boiled in my stomach up into my esophagus making it blister and char.

'So there must be another reason for your enquiry?' The smile grew slightly on the face as white as a skull; it was edged with a tang of humourless mirth. I tried to breathe as easily and calmly as I could. Just because this conversation was the most important in nature than I could ever envisage any others being did not mean that I could lose my head. It was essential to stay focused, to be the master of my emotions and mind. Otherwise things would be beyond grave, possibly irrevocable. Yet my heart could not help but thunder.

'She – I do not think – could you not perhaps, kill the husband and child and leave – it is needless to kill Lily Potter!'

'Needless?' Voldemort's voice was like a brush of silk against skin. However it did not inspire beauty or warmth with its softness but made an icy shiver snake down a weaker mans' spine. 'You do not then see her continued existence an abomination? Have you forgotten that it is one of my most revered aims to destroy the disdainful atrocity of her kind in our world? You, did you not, vow to obey my ways when I honoured you with the Dark Mark upon your flesh?'

'Yes my Lord, I feel privileged to have been trusted enough to be at your service-' I was cut off once more.

'Not to mention,' Voldemort continued with a poisonous glaze to his words. 'Her skilled opposition against us is most … _undesirable_.' The cruel leer became more pronounced on his face as our gazes did not waver when silence enveloped us again. My ears pricked a little when I heard the faintest of disturbances from behind as a soft slapping noise came into contact with the flagstone floor. The hissings of Nagini's entrance caught the Dark Lord's attention, giving me some reprieve when he turned his gaze away from mine to watch the entrance of his snake: the Dark Lord responded to whatever the snake had said in Parseltongue with smatterings of hisses and spits. I saw out of the corner of my eye the smooth, thickly dark body of the snake as it stopped momentarily to raise itself to be stroked by a white, long fingered hand, then to go about the other side of the long oak table.

'You wish to conceal yourself from me Severus?' My eyes which had been on the snake, flickered back to his in an instant. Voldemort's voice had descended an octave into barely more than a whisper. I did not allow the flutter of uncertainty that should have crept into my stomach materialise. I was imploring Occlumency to my very best and very skilled ability and could not imagine how he must think my meaning anything other than what I said aloud.

'Of course not my Lord, I would never mislead you.'

'Nagini tells me differently. Snakes have even powers that I do not Severus. She could feel the vibrations of your pulse through the floor, which as she said was … remarkable. ' I was frozen. It was futile. His eyes had me captured like a man up for the gallows. My mouth was devoid of moisture to such an extreme extent that it was difficult to work it.

'I – Lily Potter - she is not unattractive my Lord.'

My statement made little impact on Voldemort outwardly apart from the slight flicker at the corner of his thin mouth. Revulsion, humour … there was no telling what it could mean.

'It is shameful I know.' I whispered suddenly unable to meet his hypnotic gaze anymore. I felt drained as if I had been in bloody battle for many hours.

'Yes it is.' My heartbeat remained a strong current in the sea of my blood.

I did not dare look up when I heard Voldemort stand to the fire with his front to it, hands at his back.

'You have served me well Severus in your time with me…If the girl is sensible, I will let her live.'

* * *

'There are better women, of purer blood. My Lord…I beg for your pardon, it was foolish of me to ever consider such a notion.'

A long silence.

'You are forgiven Severus. For your sake I hope your allegiance never wavers again...'

'Never my Lord, you are ever merciful….'

I did not have to employ Occlumency. I was too numbed to even remember how to feel the emotion of a lie.


	10. Chapter 10 - Mind Over Matter

Lily told me once about Muggle psychology and something called fight or flight syndrome. It means that in a dangerous situation, the subconscious mind overpowers the body and decides whether to run or to protect itself by any means necessary. Although Lily disagreed with me, I always thought that the fight or flight syndrome was a bit floored. It doesn't explain what happens when the love of your life is fighting alongside you and how it changes everything. Your focus of what's going on in front of you slackens to what misses your fiancée by a mere inch or seeing her duck a jet of green flame that would stop her heart forever. It fails to mention the heady, overpowering terror of witnessing the people you love being hurt and struck down. It just doesn't give light on the fact that you are not the most important person in your life and that in mortal danger, I, James Potter, become the very least significant thing imaginable.

.x.

* * *

.x.

I stoop to bring the scrubbing brush I hold in my hand to meet the kitchen floor where I liberally begin to swirl it round in circles. The rubber gloves squeal against the wooden handle and the brushes scrape and ground the tiles into frothing white clouds of soap. The bones of my knees do not sit well with the hard floor but this does not perturb me.

'…I don't think the Government are doing enough about unemployment. There are over one and a half million out of work, the highest it's been for two years, Margret Thatcher…'

I scrub and scrub and scrub. I inch my way across the kitchen making sure no spot is left alone. I dip the brush into the shiny water of the bucket next to me and keep going. The birth of summer is starting to permeate through the air and drift in through the living room window that I've left open, all the better to smell the new roses that I had planted last Sunday.

'…Weather is set to be fine around the London area and rest of the south, with rain in Cornwall going to be blowing over to the West Country by this evening…'

I sit back on my heels and arch my stiff back. I hear a slight crackle of the baby monitor on the kitchen counter; I hoped that Dudley didn't wake up,

I hadn't finished yet.

I get to my feet awkwardly and try and brush the redness from my knees whilst picking up the bucket to pour down the sink.

'…Call me (call me) on the line. Call me, call me any, anytime…'

I look under the kitchen sink and find the bleach and an old blue toothbrush; I take off the cap and twirl it around the sink and breathe in the strong, fiery smell. I dip the toothbrush amongst the bleach and begin to work it around the taps.

'…Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, he speaks the languages of love. Oh, oh- We apologise for the interruption but we've just had some breaking news come in from London.'

I freeze as a man's voice comes through on the radio.

My fingers itch to continue, I dig the end of the toothbrush hard into my palm in my urgency to ignore it, bury it beneath me and forget but the tightness takes over and I drop it in the sink. Suddenly the white floor becomes over bright and hurts my eyes; the smell of the bleach stinks and burns the back of my throat making me feel sick.

I cling to the edge of my perfect world hoping against hope that she doesn't ruin it.

'…a few minutes ago sources say that a hostage situation has developed in London…'

Of course it's her. It's always her, right in the thick of the action, flaunting it in my face again how wonderful she is-

'...the Iranian Embassy it seems has been sieged by a group of armed men...'

It isn't her after all.

I turn and remind myself not to forget to hoover the stairs and as I pick up the toothbrush again.

I remind myself that she was never good at cleaning.


	11. Chapter 11 - Together

'Hey.' I smiled at James' entrance over my shoulder whilst busying myself with trying to match socks together. I knew I could so very easily do all the menial things in the house by magic, but it felt nice using my hands and doing something practical: it helped take my mind off of other things that I needed a break from. I found that if I only thought of the horrors of war, I could not summon the energy to get up off the sofa anymore. I felt the tension that I hadn't known I was holding ease in my shoulders and forehead. James was unharmed and had returned home to me again when I knew so many others didn't. It made me feel blessed.

'Hey.' He replied quietly giving me a warm yet tired smile; he rested his forearm against the doorjamb with ease and lent his forehead casually against it watching me. I turned my back on him, finishing with the pile of still warm, freshly washed clothes that I had just ironed into folded, slapdash halves. Although I wanted to do the housework, it didn't mean that I was very good at it.

My back tingled in the knowledge that James' intense gaze was wandering over me as he watched me work away diligently over our clothes.

'Did you see the dinner I saved for you? I left it on the-'

I turned to place the washing on the dresser but dropped it all on the floor as I happened upon James right behind me; our faces a mere inch apart.

'Well in all honestly,' He murmured in a voice that made shivers dance up to the roots of my hair and back down again to the tips of my toes. 'I was thinking of skipping dinner.' I fell into the deepness of his eyes with their hued colours of azure, gold and russet. I opened my mouth having no idea what I was going to say when James bent down and claimed my lips with such emotion I forgot all about the trampled washing under our feet...

Sometime later as James slept beside me, his warm, slow breath bathed my cheeks making my lashes flutter close in pure serenity, the washing long forgotten, I felt that I could carry on into another day of uncertainty.


	12. Chapter 12 - The Beginning Of The End

'Not long now,' Albus spoke softly to me as he took in my rounded stomach with an appraising nod. I noticed how his eyes did not twinkle behind his half-moon spectacles anymore and wondered how long we could all carry on with this war before we broke.

'No,' I said with a quiet smile, banishing my thoughts least they showed on my face. 'Not long now.' I heard James clattering around in the kitchen behind me and it helped to prop up my smile a little longer. It was difficult to sustain anything for long these days, it was exhausting. Laughter, smiles, crying, yells, yearning. It all tumbled away from one to the other in short succession. Nevertheless one thing that didn't seem to die down was that ever since I found out I was pregnant, James was hell bent on doing everything for me. I had replied a little irritably that I was only pregnant and not an invilid. Yet since my stomach had begun to get more rounded, his insistence on helping grew by a tenfold and became harder to beat down. Listening to him trying to find the tea pot was endearingly amusing.

James finally entered the little sitting room with steaming mugs and biscuits on a tray which he deposited down on the coffee table. He took his place beside me and waited.

'Profes-Albus, would you like to pour-?' My hand closed around my husbands wrist and he fell silent immediately. I could not look away from my old Headmasters eyes. I knew, even without knowing, that this was it. Looking back on the years that had past us with its bloodshed and anguish, all the death that seemed to meet us at every turn, I knew that nothing would compare to this.

'A prophecy has been made.' In all my years of knowing Albus Dumbledore, both at Hogwarts as a student and outside it in the Order, I had never seen him look so grave. There was no denying how truly terrible I knew the situation had suddenly become.

I could feel by my side that a cascade of emotion was pouring into James, drowning him. However the longer Dumbledore spoke, I felt the opposite. Everything was draining out of me, leaving me empty, dying...Dead.

'Who was it Professor?' James said, his voice hitching in an uneven sort of way; the truth threatening to overwhelm him. James had never killed a single person in his life. He had come close, yet abstained in the thick of battle. However I knew if the person whom had gone to Voldemort presented themselves in front of him now, he would end their life. Family, James had always said and stood by most fiercely, was the most important thing in a person's life. In times such as these, he prided himself on making the most of every situation to radiate his love to those that he cherished most dearly.

'Please James, call me Albus.' He was stalling.

'Albus, who told Voldemort about the prophecy, who was it?' James' shoulders were hunched with anguished tension, his hazel eyes behind his glasses burned with painful intensity. His first and probably only child sentenced to death was beyond any pain that could ever be encapsulated into words.

There was a moment of such silence that I had never experienced before. It felt as if the whole world had suddenly ceased to be. All had become hushed and quiet. Slowly, so very slowly, the piercing blue eyes came to rest upon me and in that moment, he conveyed everything.

I closed my eyes. How had it all come to this.


	13. Chapter 13 - A Black Hole

With the Halloween feast thankfully finished, I swept down to my office in relief of its cool solitude. The sound of all the children laughing with each other and having an excuse to be light hearted in the midst of a war put a sickening knot in my stomach. I almost forget now why the thought of becoming a Professor at Hogwarts filled me with feelings of superiority and pride. The fact that the Dark Lord had singled me out above all others was momentous in my standing. His most trusted and dedicated servant. Yet the turning of events vanquished it all to dust.

I could feel Albus' infrequent but persistent eyes fix me throughout dinner from down the long oak table where I sat, resolute in silence with occasional sips of wine or tastes of stew. But I refused to consent their obtrusiveness with my acknowledgement. Instead I kept my mind blank and unfeeling. I let the noise of students wash over me; I let my mind sink into oblivion and fall into a cocoon of quiet. But sweeping down through the castle now, it began to build up again as it often did; an infection never quite eradicated by any medicinal efforts.

Upon reaching my office door, I slammed it shut with a bang, as if hoping the expense of my ever suffocating anguish would be vanquished by doing so.

It was not.

The chilly room was sparse of affection but on the other hand was filled with a collection of jars of potions ingredients that I had tried to busy myself with.

I stood in the darkness in a sort of slow burning, crazed turmoil. It was like an inexpressible hunger that could not be satisfied, an endless thrumming in the background of my mind. It would not dissipate with sleep but fill my dreams with myself running futilely towards an unknown destination. I would not be thrown into relief with the tedium of teaching first years or dealing with the various illicit activities of my houses students. I brandished my wand violently at my office door to cast my usual enchantments at its entrance to seal it and strode to sit at my desk. I prodded its tip at the stub of candle wick to relight it.

I sucked in several long, deep, steading breathes through a tight chest and dry throat. It had been this way since understanding that the Dark Lord intended to hunt down the Potters and kill her boy. A pair of dark green eyes swam before my eyes in a tantalising hypnosis. They stared at me in their quiet way, not in reproach but in something softer than resolution. How I _yearned_ to have not spoken of the Prophecy, how it haunted my every waking moment. She had been in hiding for so long now and yet the fear never went from me. If _I_ was the one to come about the death of my dearest, my dearest - how could I ever …

Nonetheless, if they had evaded the Dark Lord thus far, it must be seen as encouraging. Those who displeased him managed to last only a mere week or two at most before being found, at least the most accomplished of his enemies anyway. The bastard Black who was their secret keeper, however much I despised him, seemed unlikely to betray his best friend Potter. Also _he_ himself said he would not harm her when he found them, if she was sensible…

The anguish that had settled itself within me quietened a little at these thoughts. It was unwise to lose control and focus. With my breathing easier I set about marking the homework of my mostly inept class of third years by candlelight. Several hours had passed and I had nearly succumbed to the desire to turn in for the night, when my office was suddenly filled with a startlingly silver phoenix patronus that blinded me for a moment. It opened its beak -

Severus,

If you would consent to coming up to my office immediately, I would be most grateful.

Albus

* * *

I left Dumbledores office an immeasurable amount of time later and walked through my own into my room.

I sunk to the cold floor.

I was alive, yet everything was screaming at me that I was dead.


	14. Chapter 14 - Three Ways To Die

They say that your life flashes before your eyes before you die. I wonder how blissfully ignorant people must be to think that you have that much time to go back on every triumph, every failure and everything else in between when death faces you so inescapably.

They also say that bravery isn't the absence of fear, but the judgement that something else is more important, excepting that fear and doing it anyway. If you are strong enough, if your mind can wade through and battle amongst the terror that engulfs you when in seconds you know it's all over, you may be able to think of a few things before you die.

I thought of three.

The first was no matter what came out of his mouth, be it demands to get out of the way, or that cold, high laughter that made your spine contort against the inhumanness of it, it was to _not_ stand aside and protect your baby with everything that god gave you and hope that against all knowledge and experience, it would be enough to save him.

The second was what made your arms shake from where they stood outstretched to fulfil the first thought, make your breathing murder and a place somewhere not quite identifiable because you didn't realise it was there before, _hurt_ in such agony. Your husband, your beautiful strong anchor in this world, called out to you to go with his son and run, leaving him to fight a battle he would not win. You hear the curse, the rush of death down the hall, the blinding green fire before you screamingly slam the door shut of the nursery and the crash as he drops dead.

He opens his mouth, his scarlet eyes mad. I close my own and instead of waiting for the next change in my life to occur, I was waiting for the end of it.

The third thought, or rather a realisation of ignorance on my own part was this. Thinking that your friends might have saved you.

'_Avada_-'

And yet two of them had been the death of you.

'kedavra!'


	15. Chapter 15 - Hallelujah

The beauty of thy most treasured peace,

Will come only in forgiveness of conscience truce,

To desire lone in heat of dreams is dire and leads to defeat,

Yet to not yearn and crave assails all fire from flesh and heart,

It is that what makes us live and that what leaves its mark,

The window to his retired soul remains forever black,

The emerald light has gone.

It will never come back

* * *

I held on to Potters robes with desperate fingers as my neck throbbed an agonising throb. My extremities were starting to turn icy and the unloved room hazily diminished of life and light as it began increasingly difficult to hang on. Then all of a sudden he grasped my hand in his, a fiery relief against the chill of death. In all the years I had known Potter I had never touched his skin, so pale like his mothers.

I heard gurgling's of blood in my throat. I tasted it on my tongue and at the back of my teeth. It would soon be over.

Even though I knew I was dying, I felt oddly detached from it. It was although I was watching on from above the scene where I did not feel I belonged. Perhaps it was because I had expected to die so many times beforehand and yet it had never come into fruition. I saw myself lying on the dirty floorboards with Potter crouched next to me, bowed close to my face by my fists implorations; Granger and Weasley stood back a little from the scene, a fly on the wall.

But now it was final, it was conclusive. The deadly blow had been struck. The final job had been completed. It was time to go.

I think I knew somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind that I was not going to make it through this war even if Dumbledore expected me to. If I had, I'm not sure whether I would have wanted to. Everything in my life had been lived. I had no reason to stay anymore.

I felt Potters quick breath on the slick skin of our hands as he clutched in the other the memories that had overflowed my being in a glass vial. The imprints that gave heed to everything. In some cases he would know me better than Dumbledore and his mother put together.

My breathing was slowing, my blood was draining, and the Shrieking shack was disappearing.

'Look…at...me.'

It was nice to see her one last time.

* * *

The end. Thank you to anyone who has read my story, I hope you enjoyed it! x


End file.
